Agreed, given that a group within MS completely rewrote MS Office in Java. You could open up your browser on any platform and work in MS Office. Gates had a screaming fit and killed the project. Shortly thereafter, the VP in charge of the project took a year-long sabbatical. Don't know if he was forced to or if it was voluntary, or if he ever went back.
we don't allow phone users or dirver's license holders to remain anonymous
1. Phone users? That's funny; last time I checked, pay phones or phones in motel rooms don't check IDs...I think you're all wrong about this one. I'll grant that you can't get a phone installed without giving billing info to the phone company, but that's a far cry from being required by the government to confirm your identity before using a ohone.
2. Driver's license? Sure, you've got to have a license in this country to drive on the Government's roads. No arguing there. But I can build a system of roads on my country estate and tear around them at over 200 mph if I want to. If my neighbor builds a road system, we could tie them together If we got enough adjoining property owners to do this, we could all drive for miles and drove all over each other's roads without any licensing by the government. Analogizing this to the internet is left as an exercise for the reader.
Anonymity on the web is almost entirely focused on the ability to perform porn-related transactions without shame. Anyone who thinks it has anything to do with anything else needs a clue. Funny, the internet porn industry seems to be doing just fine, even though they collect credit card numbers, which is as far from anonymous as you can get.
just a Consent Decree that consisted of promising not to use anti-competitive tactics in the operating systems market Pre-consent decree: Every PC vendor told MS how many PCs they sold.
Post-consent decree: Every PC vendor told MS how many PCs they sold within each model line.
There was no change in pricing. There was no change in behavior. The net effect of the consent decree was to hand MS, who already had the best overall view of the PC industry, a much more detailed view of the industry. Stupid DOJ.
Alt-F4 closes the currently active window. That may or may not be the shell, so Alt-F4 may or may not shut down Windows. Repeating the key sequence doesn't always work either, since some applications pop up a dialog box ("Save Changes?") when they shut down.
We essentially already have this. Unfortunately, it only applies to government. I believe that what we need is to apply governmental restrictions on privacy to corporations. The next revolution will be directed at the megacorps.
Did you read the article? Did you read the bit where it said that third party emails can be subpoenaed? In other words, if I get sued, the emails of people I sent emails to can be subpoenaed.
Explain to me how in god's fucking name can someone justify that much to reissue new id's and passwords?
Let's assume, for the sake of argument, that the company I work for contracts you to come in and change everyone's user ID and password.
There are 500 users in the company, at five sites. Here's what we need you to do (within 2-3 days): - assign all users a new ID and password - enter those IDs and passwords in all domains and Netware servers (total of about 25 Netware and NT servers) - delete the old IDs - add the new IDs to all the existing groups - delete old IDs from all the existing groups - reconfigure Exchange to work with the new IDs - reassign all the group memberships in Exchange, too - reconfigure our document management software to work with the new IDs. - go to all the NT workstations where people have shared files and reconfigure those - rewrite the brain-dead login scripts that check for user IDs instead of group memberships to work with the new IDs
You need to do this outside of normal working hours. You can subcontract as much of this as you like. We won't loan you any of our staff; they're too busy with damage control and normal duties.
What's your fee? I think $12,500 is CHEAP.
P.S. new id's New ids would be pretty expensive actually, though not as much as new egos or superegos:)
Five dead. Yeah, that's a lot. Ever hear of (forgive my spelling) the Serbs? Or Tianmen Square? Or the Hutus and the Tutsis? Hundreds of thousands dead.
You would today take away a right that admittedly costs dozens or hundreds of lives every year. In return, will you give us the guarantee that the government will NEVER become hostile to its citizenry? Before you answer, think about how authorities in this country treat minorities. Consider how short a distance it is from their current repressive behavior to genocide.
And for the record, I don't own a gun and probably never will. But I don't go around trying to force MY views on people that I can't protect.
1. Losing the opportunity to make millions is not the same thing as losing millions. And even if it were, you're off by about three orders of magnitude - think billions.
2. Last time I checked, IBM's revenue was larger than Dell's, Gateway's, Compaq's, and HP's. Combined. Tell me again about IBM's economic failure?
Yup. I was thinking the other day that placing ANYTHING into a directory that was accessible by EVERYBODY and granting EVERYBODY permission to read it constituted implicit permission to make copies.
I have. It works. On Win 95 boxes that wouldn't boot into Windows, I've exported the entire registry to a text file, found problems, made changes, and then reimported the registry file. No problem and very slick.
IIRC, Orson Scott Card addressed this issue in a story set in Isaac Asimpv's universe. The library on Trantor had indices of going back thousands of years, but the contents of the library had never been refreshed. The librarians knew exactly what they had lost.
Hmm..you must have missed the Hellmouth stories. I remember the story you note, and how at around 400 posts it was EXTREMELY active. Of course, that number of posts was exceeded just yesterday by the mention of a potential GPL violation.
I think a more accurate metric of the most active story would be total posts / total number of currently active posters (defined as, maybe, people who've posted within the last week). A more accurate metric of most visited stories would be total hits / total number of registered users. Thus a story commented on three times by every poster when there were 100 posters would be more active than a story commented on by half of 10,000 posters.
You are absolutely correct. If a federal court judge orders you to stop distributing the code, then you have no choice. Short of that happenstance, you have no choice.
Slashdot also lets you view other people's comments, and permits everyone to moderate (theoretically)./.'s moderation system looks highly patentable to me; perhaps CmdrTaco et al should put money where mouth is and create a defensive patent.
Note that "prior art" isn't always a defense. IANAL, but IIRC, you've got to have been using the invention/process/whatever for more than a year before the patent is applied for, or else you may be liable for royalties.
I judge by your URL that you're from the UK. I'll skip the usual anti-monarchist comments:) and jump right to agreeing with you. Your statement is a true statement. The premise is true. The conclusion is true. Any questions?
i'm not a stallman fan, but this is NOT what the GPL is about. and therefore will NEVER happen, if the FSF is what i think it is,
I could easily see the FSF excluding specific companies from their licenses if the GPL was found to be unenforceable, in whole or in part. Sometimes it's not enough to be quiet and leave other people alone; sometimes you have to fight for freedom. If the FSF is not willing to fight for freedom, then they're not about freedom...
Watched the first two scenes (the hit and the date with the boss's dauggirlfriend) and couldn't stomach the rest. So I'd seen the bit about "Do you know what they call a Big Mac in France?"
What does "Not a very nice person at all" refer to?
Slashdot Mirror
Exercise for the reader...
Find the duration of a patent, given the cost for its first year and its total cost for the duration of its applicability.
(Hint: use logarithms)
Yeah - remember when the 80486 CPU was a server component, and desktops wouldn't be able to take advantage of the CPUs?
Porting of Office is very likely
Agreed, given that a group within MS completely rewrote MS Office in Java. You could open up your browser on any platform and work in MS Office. Gates had a screaming fit and killed the project. Shortly thereafter, the VP in charge of the project took a year-long sabbatical. Don't know if he was forced to or if it was voluntary, or if he ever went back.
we don't allow phone users or dirver's license holders to remain anonymous
1. Phone users? That's funny; last time I checked, pay phones or phones in motel rooms don't check IDs...I think you're all wrong about this one. I'll grant that you can't get a phone installed without giving billing info to the phone company, but that's a far cry from being required by the government to confirm your identity before using a ohone.
2. Driver's license? Sure, you've got to have a license in this country to drive on the Government's roads. No arguing there. But I can build a system of roads on my country estate and tear around them at over 200 mph if I want to. If my neighbor builds a road system, we could tie them together If we got enough adjoining property owners to do this, we could all drive for miles and drove all over each other's roads without any licensing by the government. Analogizing this to the internet is left as an exercise for the reader.
Anonymity on the web is almost entirely focused on the ability to perform porn-related transactions without shame. Anyone who thinks it has anything to do with anything else needs a clue.
Funny, the internet porn industry seems to be doing just fine, even though they collect credit card numbers, which is as far from anonymous as you can get.
just a Consent Decree that consisted of promising not to use anti-competitive tactics in the operating systems market
Pre-consent decree: Every PC vendor told MS
how many PCs they sold.
Post-consent decree: Every PC vendor told MS how many PCs they sold within each model line.
There was no change in pricing. There was no change in behavior. The net effect of the consent decree was to hand MS, who already had the best overall view of the PC industry, a much more detailed view of the industry. Stupid DOJ.
Alt-F4 closes the currently active window. That may or may not be the shell, so Alt-F4 may or may not shut down Windows. Repeating the key sequence doesn't always work either, since some applications pop up a dialog box ("Save Changes?") when they shut down.
We essentially already have this. Unfortunately, it only applies to government. I believe that what we need is to apply governmental restrictions on privacy to corporations. The next revolution will be directed at the megacorps.
Did you read the article? Did you read the bit where it said that third party emails can be subpoenaed? In other words, if I get sued, the emails of people I sent emails to can be subpoenaed.
Explain to me how in god's fucking name can someone justify that much to reissue new id's and passwords?
:)
Let's assume, for the sake of argument, that the company I work for contracts you to come in and change everyone's user ID and password.
There are 500 users in the company, at five sites. Here's what we need you to do (within 2-3 days):
- assign all users a new ID and password
- enter those IDs and passwords in all domains and Netware servers (total of about 25 Netware and NT servers)
- delete the old IDs
- add the new IDs to all the existing groups
- delete old IDs from all the existing groups
- reconfigure Exchange to work with the new IDs
- reassign all the group memberships in Exchange, too
- reconfigure our document management software to work with the new IDs.
- go to all the NT workstations where people have shared files and reconfigure those
- rewrite the brain-dead login scripts that check for user IDs instead of group memberships to work with the new IDs
You need to do this outside of normal working hours. You can subcontract as much of this as you like. We won't loan you any of our staff; they're too busy with damage control and normal duties.
What's your fee? I think $12,500 is CHEAP.
P.S.
new id's
New ids would be pretty expensive actually, though not as much as new egos or superegos
Five dead. Yeah, that's a lot. Ever hear of (forgive my spelling) the Serbs? Or Tianmen Square? Or the Hutus and the Tutsis? Hundreds of thousands dead.
You would today take away a right that admittedly costs dozens or hundreds of lives every year. In return, will you give us the guarantee that the government will NEVER become hostile to its citizenry? Before you answer, think about how authorities in this country treat minorities. Consider how short a distance it is from their current repressive behavior to genocide.
And for the record, I don't own a gun and probably never will. But I don't go around trying to force MY views on people that I can't protect.
Or maybe "GNU/Linux-distributions-incorporating XWindows-with-Netscape-and-StarOffice-and-don't-fo rget-about-all-those-gnifty-gnon-gnu-too ls-too-oh-and-what-about..."
Question - if the binary is public domain, wouldn't the source be public domain? And would patent law require them to publish their code?
1. Losing the opportunity to make millions is not the same thing as losing millions. And even if it were, you're off by about three orders of magnitude - think billions.
2. Last time I checked, IBM's revenue was larger than Dell's, Gateway's, Compaq's, and HP's. Combined. Tell me again about IBM's economic failure?
Yup. I was thinking the other day that placing ANYTHING into a directory that was accessible by EVERYBODY and granting EVERYBODY permission to read it constituted implicit permission to make copies.
I have. It works. On Win 95 boxes that wouldn't boot into Windows, I've exported the entire registry to a text file, found problems, made changes, and then reimported the registry file. No problem and very slick.
IIRC, Orson Scott Card addressed this issue in a story set in Isaac Asimpv's universe. The library on Trantor had indices of going back thousands of years, but the contents of the library had never been refreshed. The librarians knew exactly what they had lost.
Hmm..you must have missed the Hellmouth stories. I remember the story you note, and how at around 400 posts it was EXTREMELY active. Of course, that number of posts was exceeded just yesterday by the mention of a potential GPL violation.
I think a more accurate metric of the most active story would be total posts / total number of currently active posters (defined as, maybe, people who've posted within the last week). A more accurate metric of most visited stories would be total hits / total number of registered users. Thus a story commented on three times by every poster when there were 100 posters would be more active than a story commented on by half of 10,000 posters.
You are absolutely correct. If a federal court judge orders you to stop distributing the code, then you have no choice. Short of that happenstance, you have no choice.
I hadn't even considered the trade issues in region coding before; I wonder what the WTO would think of them?
And it should be carefully chosen garbage, so CRC checks of the software produce the same checksums...
Slashdot basically does the same thing
/.'s moderation system looks highly patentable to me; perhaps CmdrTaco et al should put money where mouth is and create a defensive patent.
Slashdot also lets you view other people's comments, and permits everyone to moderate (theoretically).
Note that "prior art" isn't always a defense. IANAL, but IIRC, you've got to have been using the invention/process/whatever for more than a year before the patent is applied for, or else you may be liable for royalties.
I judge by your URL that you're from the UK. I'll skip the usual anti-monarchist comments :) and jump right to agreeing with you. Your statement is a true statement. The premise is true. The conclusion is true. Any questions?
i'm not a stallman fan, but this is NOT what the GPL is about. and therefore will NEVER happen, if the FSF is what i think it is,
I could easily see the FSF excluding specific companies from their licenses if the GPL was found to be unenforceable, in whole or in part. Sometimes it's not enough to be quiet and leave other people alone; sometimes you have to fight for freedom. If the FSF is not willing to fight for freedom, then they're not about freedom...
Watched the first two scenes (the hit and the date with the boss's dauggirlfriend) and couldn't stomach the rest. So I'd seen the bit about "Do you know what they call a Big Mac in France?"
What does "Not a very nice person at all" refer to?
From Witches Abroad
Granny Weatherwax: "She's my sister!"
Magrat: "They're sisters?"
Complete change of scene between those two quotes. Clever (perhaps too clever) bit of writing. One tiny example of why Pratchett is best read.